Bigelow Commercial Space Station
The Bigelow Next-Generation Commercial Space Station is a private orbital space complex currently under development by Bigelow. The space station will include both Sundancer and BA 330 expandable spacecraft modules and a central docking node, propulsion, solar arrays, and attached crew capsules. Initial launch of space station components is planned for 2014, with portions of the station available for leased use as early as 2015. Bigelow has publicly shown space station design configurations with up to nine BA 330 modules containing 100,000 cu ft (2,800 m3) of habitable space. Bigelow began to publicly refer to the initial configuration — two Sundancer modules and one BA 330 module — of the first Bigelow station as "Space Complex Alpha" in October 2010.
A second orbital station, Space Complex Bravo, is scheduled to begin launches in 2016.
Bigelow announced in October 2010 that it has agreements with six sovereign nations to utilize on-orbit facilities of the commercial space station: United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Sweden. By February 2011, this number had risen to seven.
An earlier space station, CSS Skywalker (Commercial Space Station Skywalker), was Bigelow's 2005 concept for the first space hotel. The Skywalker was to be composed of multiple Nautilus habitat modules, which would be expanded and connected upon reaching orbit. An MDPM (Multi-Directional Propulsion Module) would allow the Skywalker to be moved into interplanetary or lunar trajectories.
In November 2010, Bigelow indicated that the company would like to construct ten or more space stations and that there is a substantial commercial market to support such growth.
Read more about this topic: Bigelow Aerospace
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